Eating back Calories Burned

Retroguy2000 wrote: »

@PAV8888

(snip)

- I was referring to the compensatory effect of NEAT being reduced by exercise. I've seen conflicting studies on this. It seems like high intensity cardio is more likely to result in loss of NEAT than resistance training or low intensity cardio, and that fits with my personal experience. I've recently taken up a sporting activity on weekend mornings and I feel wiped after that for most of the day. I would not be surprised in the least if my NEAT went down, therefore eating back 100% of those activity calories (even if that estimate were accurate) would be a mistake. If you can find more data on this, that would be great. I've seen sites saying exercise reduces NEAT, then when trying to find the actual studies, one says it does, another says it doesn't.

(snip more, lots of good stuff)

Agree with you & PAV that it seems common sense, and accords my experience, that exercise fatigue can lower NEAT.

But I think the issue maybe isn't so much "high intensity cardio" or any other specific thing, but more like any total exercise load that is too taxing for a person's current fitness level, or on the verge of being that.

The studies on the Hadza and the like are still about population averages. The NEAT reduction can't be some individually zero-sum universal thing, though, right? Elite athletes do levels of cardio that would probably literally kill me (if I could even do them!), plus have normal daily lives (not flat out in bed). They need to eat pretty massive numbers of calories. Ditto even for normal folks with highly active jobs, or doing tri training alongside a normal busy life, or whatever.

It's somewhat common around here (MFP) to see folks thinking they need to do lots of punitive, intense exercise (HIIT every day as a semi-beginner, or some such) in order to get fit or lose weight, and IMO that's the kind of thing that probably does cause a NEAT penalty, especially if stacked on top of a big calorie deficit.

More than once I've tried to convince people here that all intense, all the time, is a poor plan. In the couple of cases where that's succeeded ( ), I've gotten positive feedback on how that went for them.

There are rules of thumb people use to put together training plans for serious athletic improvement, and those usually involve some kind of gradual ramp up in volume/intensity, and even at extreme points in the plan a mix of intensities and durations, not all high intensity all the time. There are also metrics and tools to monitor for fatigue, over-training, etc.

The "exercise to exhaustion" idea sometimes suggested for weight loss is almost diametrically different from that gradual progression idea.

As an aside, I'm like PAV in that it's strength training that seems more likely to sap my energy, probably because I don't do enough of it regularly, but only seasonally, so I'm not adapted to the modality. Very intense cardio is fatiguing, but moderately intense or mild/long (within reason) doesn't seem to be. I'd note that "very intense" is defined with respect to one's current abilities, not some absolute abstract thing. (We're talking about definitions involving RPE, or heart rate ranges, or 1RM, or something like that - those are individual.)

Samesies to both you and PAV concerning impact of the rare way over calorie goal indulgence, too, including his comments about things like resting HR, nail growth rate, etc. - though none of that is measured/tracked statistically, for me, just subjective observation.

Through all of this, though, I think that if a person monitors real results (weight and food log relationship), and adjusts, they're going to eventually compensate for any NEAT penalty from exercise, unless their exercise schedule is unusually variable over the medium to long haul.

i eat back about half my exercise calories, depending. that's because MFP and most other apps and trackers exaggerate calories burned, and i have never found myself to be hungry after eating back half the calories. if i'm not hungry and meet my protein goals, i may not eat any exercise calories.

Winning4EJ wrote: »

Some of you got "Very" deep on this question

What did you take from it all? What are you going to do going forward?

Winning4EJ wrote: »

Some of you got "Very" deep on this question. 🤔😊 Whew...

We do that here

LOLOL @kshama2001